


i will come back

by unbreakable_groundriot



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Baby Jack Kline, Castiel is Jack Kline's Parent, Castiel's POV, Dean Winchester is Jack Kline's Parent, Dialogue Light, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Marvelous Marvin sings Kidz Bop, Not Beta Read, Pre-Series Finale, Sam Winchester is Jack Kline's Parent, Time Skips, Unhappy Ending, Written Pre Spanish Dub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27700352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbreakable_groundriot/pseuds/unbreakable_groundriot
Summary: Marvelous Marvin sings something his brain hasn't processed yet and the thirty-pound weight on his stomach hums along. He notices that his impromptu tumble mat is awake and smiled big and wide. "Hi, Daddy!"In which Castiel finds himself back on Earth with a three-year-old Jack and a Marvelous Marvin that won't stop singing classic rock and maybe this is his shot had finally getting what he wants.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 14
Kudos: 113





	1. come home, come home

As it turns out even God can run out of energy... Or maybe God just wants to live the life stolen from him.

And so he lands with a muffled thud, a deep groan, then another thud, and all the air is knocked out of his chest. 

Marvelous Marvin sings something his brain hasn't processed yet and the thirty-pound weight on his stomach hums along. He notices that his impromptu tumble mat is awake and smiled big and wide. "Hi, Daddy!"

It's a short trek from the small patch of trees where they'd appeared to the closest Gas-N-Sip. He calls twelve phone numbers total (eight of Dean's burner phones and four of Sam's burner phones) before Dean picks up, tells him to fuck off, and hangs up. To be fair he sounds drunk (but when isn't he at least a little inebriated?).

Sam picks up when he tries again. He spits a threat but promises to be there in fifteen minutes. 

Marvelous Marvin is spared a splash of holy water. Jack giggles his way through it and squeals with laughter when Castiel ends up soggy. 

The ride to the bunker is filled with question after question that he has no answer to. One moment he was being sucked into The Empty and the next he'd just appeared with a three-year-old god and a talking teddy bear. Sam squeezes the back of his neck as if he's going to disappear and his eyes go red and wet when Jack smiles and says, "Hi, Daddy!" 

"It's been two weeks since you... left," Sam explains. "Ten days since Jack fixed everything and left. I didn't think we would see either of you ever again, man." He glances over briefly before turning his eyes back to the road. "Are you... you?"

It hadn't crossed his mind to check. Human? Angel? Or something else? He flexes his hands and tugs down the truck's visor to stare at himself for what might be minutes or might be seconds. "I'm hungry." He tries to focus on the frequency of angel radio but hears nothing but the road noise of the truck. 

It feels good. It feels so good that his heart clenches and his eyes burn. "I think I'm human."

* * *

The bunker hums with the ambient noise of the pipes and electricity. Marvelous Marvin sings a children's version of "Livin' On a Prayer." That particular cassette and Marvelous Marvin had been given to Jack from Dean months ago as a joke but, to the chagrin of everyone, Jack had taken to the tape and the toy. 

Sam holds Jack tight as he lopes down the stairs. Castiel's world spins briefly when he reaches the bottom. Everything is just so much when you're human. It had taken him days to get used to it last time. 

"Dean hasn't been doing so great since everything ended," Sam speaks in a hushed whisper as if the man in question will appear at any moment. "He will probably try and shoot you so maybe I should, you know, break the news?"

Dean doesn't try to shoot him, thankfully, but he does slug him right in the jaw. It's not particularly painful primarily because Dean is three sheets to the wind (he'd learned that one from a Johnny Bond song) and stumbles into him from the desired interia of the punch. Dean slurring something and trying to hit him on the chest. There's no force behind the strikes and the slurred words turn into pained sobs. 

Sam has the decency to take the confused and confusing Jack out of the room. 


	2. honey don't feed me I will come back

It takes three bottles of water, one bout of vomiting, and a lot of convincing to get Dean to go and sleep it off. Castiel can't really remember the last time he'd seen Dean drunk. Alcohol is often breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert in the daily routine of Dean Winchester. Somehow seeing him drink himself into a stupor rather than drinking to feed his dependency is less painful.

Jack doesn't say much. He reaches for Dean when he stumbles off to his bedroom with Sam's help. He eats a PB&J and, thankfully, doesn't activate Marvelous Marvin again. 

Sam is nearly as quiet. They sit at the war table where Jack smears his sticky fingers on the table and Castiel picks at the crust of his own unbitten sandwich. 

"He didn't really say what happened. He just said the Empty took you. After Jack brought everyone back and we found Eileen..." He shrugs his broad shoulders. "Today was a bad day I guess."

"How many bad days have there been?"

Jack activates Marvelous Marvin and the bear starts to play "Funkytown."

"How many songs does that thing have?" Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. Jack smiles and bops his head offbeat. 

* * *

  
Sometime around seven in the evening Dean winces his way through the bunker and into the kitchen. Jack is passed out on one of the chairs in the library. Sam isn't far away. He smiles down at his phone between reading a paperback novel with a picture of a greek temple on it.   
  


"Hello, Dean."

Dean holds up his hand as he downs a bottle of water. He throws it somewhere in the vicinity of the recycling bin and then grabs another. "How are you here and why is Jack a toddler?"

Maybe it's best they don't address the elephant in the room. Maybe it's best. 

"I can't answer that. I woke up with Jack. I tried to call and then you insulted me." He tries to stand a little less stiffly. He might be human now and he might have felt human for years now but Dean had once informed him that his stiff, loose armed, unblinking stance was unnerving. "Jack seems happy enough."

Dean is focusing on him the way he focuses on memorizing sigils and wardings. His hair is greasy and his eyes are bloodshot. He takes a long pull of water, swallows hard, and clears his throat. "You're here. On Earth. You're here on Earth after that stunt you pulled. And Jack is here after telling us that he'll be in every blade of grass like some off-brand Mufasa." He points again. "And don't tell me you don't get that reference."

"You're supposed to be dead or asleep or whatever happens in the Empty."

Happiness isn't in the having. It's in just being.

It claws at his chest like a rabid animal. He thought it had been put to rest after years of keeping it at bay but it's so much worse now that it's been fed once. 

"Do you want me to leave?" 

And it's Gadreel all over again. It's finding a warm bed and a hot shower and clean clothes and good food only to be cast out with enough money for bus fare and nothing more. It's human terror feeding the thing in his chest. 

"That isn't...Did I say that?" And Dean just looks sad. "This is your home, man. Having you and Jack back is... It feels like a dream. I don't even know if I'm awake."

In the distance, Marvelous Marvin starts to play "Livin' on a Prayer" again.

"I am going to throw that thing into a lake." 

Castiel can't stop himself from smiling. 


	3. no better version of me I could pretend to be tonight

Jack is a quiet child. His favorite phrase is "Hi, Daddy!" which becomes very confusing when he cries for daddy when he has a nightmare. He sleeps in his old bedroom. He still has his dinosaur nightlight and Sam still takes his tablet away after his maximum three hours of screen time a day. The only addition is a set of toddler rails to keep him from rolling off of the bed. He still manages to crawl his way out of bed to curl up with one of them every once in a while. 

Sam had pointed out after Jack has gone to bed after a few too many drinks that the boy had never had a childhood. Dean added that at least they'd managed to skip the potty training stage (for the most part). They'd all laughed but it was a hollow sound.

Sam leaves on occasion to visit Eileen. She's settled not far away and Sam mentioned asking her to move into the bunker. Dean had only made a lewd joke about soundproofing the walls. When Sam's gone they sit in silence watching a movie for Jack or eating dinner or just spend time away from each other. 

Happiness isn't in the having. It's in just being.

Horseshit. 

The being hurts. 

Before the being had been watching movies and laughing and touching. The being was listening to Dean wax poetic about the differences between the 1967 Chevy Impala and the 2019 Chevy Impala even though he couldn't care less. The being was hunting together and playing detective. The being was just...Being. It had felt good. 

This hurts. 

He thinks that Sam has caught a whiff of the cause of the tension but he’s too wide-eyed and lovestruck to say anything or maybe it’s just too awkward.

“Stop trying to force it.”

Jack is the one who jumps at the sudden sound of Dean’s voice. He blinks wide-eyed and then smiles. “Hi, Daddy!”

“I’m just trying to get him to ask for things.”

Dean drinks more these days. When he’s not drunk he’s damn well trying to get there. He waves his half-empty beer bottle toward where Jack and Sam are sitting on the floor. “If he doesn’t want to talk don’t try to make him.”

Castiel catches his eye. For the first time in weeks, Dean doesn’t look away.

“I didn’t talk for a year after mom died... The first time. Who knows what’s going on in there. He'll talk when he's ready."

* * *

Sam takes Jack with him when he goes to Eileen's for the weekend. He gives his brother a look and his brother gives him a look back. They're masters of nonverbal communication.

The bunker hums with the ambient noise of the pipes and electricity. The silence (or the lack of Marvelous Marvin) is deafening.

"Do you want to get drunk and watch Netflix?" 

And somehow it's that easy. 

They lean against the headboard of the memory foam bed. Their shoulders barely brush and their socked feet knock together on occasion. They used to do this before the end of the world and before the Empty. They would sit and watch something mindless on Dean's laptop and talk quietly about things that didn't matter. 

He'd been an angel then and alcohol took much, much longer to affect him. Now he's three two-finger glasses of the good stuff from wherever Dean hides bottles from Sam. The world is warm and his human body is loose. Every time he blinks the movie jumps in time a good thirty for forty seconds.   
  


Slowly he finds his head lolling to one side. He blinks and there's something warm and firm and stiff under his cheek. 

He blinks again and the credits are rolling. 

"You fell asleep, Cas." 

Dean's drink roughened voice answers him before he can even formulate a question. "You're a lightweight now."

Castiel, he's never called himself Cas, sits up so quickly his head spins. "I'm sorry." It comes out faster than he means it to or does it come out too slowly? "I should go to my room."

In the time before his trip to the Empty, it would have been Dean that fell asleep on his shoulder. Things had been so damned easy. 

"You could stay." 

Dean won't meet his eyes and the thing in his chest rattles around and squeezes at his heart. Being human, fully human, involves feeling so, so much and it's both horrible and wonderful all at once. 

"I make you uncomfortable."

They shouldn't talk about it. He shouldn't bring it up but the being hurts so much. He thinks or maybe knows, that an outright rejection would hurt less than this. Maybe it's naive.

"It's not you, Cas."  
"Don't bullshit me, Dean."

And the floodgates open. 

"It's been three months and you haven't been able to be in the same room alone with me. Just say you don't feel the same way! Insult me! Anything but this!"

It doesn't feel liberating, but it feels just as terrifying as the moments before the Empty took him. 

The look on Dean's face isn't so different from that moment. His eyes are wet and red-rimmed. His mouth is set straight and he swallows hard. This time, however, he doesn't sit stunned and silent. He reaches out to pull Cas closer with a hand on the back of his neck. 

"I didn't say it back because I thought..." He presses their foreheads together. "I didn't know you could feel that way as an angel. I was scared, Cas. I'm scared right now. I thought if I didn't say it back then you wouldn't be taken. I thought it would have stopped it from taking you."

Castiel's breath catches in his throat. They don't kiss. There's no grand gesture or declaration. He holds Dean's face and strokes his thumb over those delicate, high cheekbones. 

"I don't know if I can ever say it."  
"I don't need to hear it."


	4. to be loved, to be loved

It all comes back so quickly that sometimes he thinks he's dreaming. 

The tension in the bunker is replaced with the air of easy camaraderie. Laughter returns (along with that damnable Marvelous Marvine) and so do smiles. Some arguments end in slammed doors but apologies come quickly. It's so easy to just be.   
  


The only elephant in the room is Sam when he lumbers by. He does not comment on the new touches and kisses and closeness. He does not comment on Castiel emptying his room to move his few possessions into Dean's room (their room). He does raise his rather expressive eyebrows when he catches Dean pouring out a bottle of whiskey he'd squirreled away.   
  


("I need to cut back on the hard stuff.")

Jack is all smiles and tantrums and Winchester stubbornness. He demands attention every time he sees Sam kiss Eileen and he demands attention every time Castiel kisses Dean. Marvelous Marvin also demands attention when it sings a distorted, tinny version of "Whole Lotta Love." 

"I think I want to move in with Eileen." 

And that seems like it shouldn't be easy. 

Jack is dozing against Dean's chest when Sam drops that bomb. Castiel isn't stupid. He's millions of years old and he's been around the codependent brothers for more than a decade now. The timing is deliberate. Dean won't snap and snarl and grow defensive when there's a little boy snuggled up and snoring into his neck. 

"That serious, huh?" Dean smiles wide and genuine with his dimples and crow's feet. "Or did you put a bun in that oven?"

Castiel rolls his eyes and smacks his shoulder with the back of his hand. "Don't be crude."

Sam's bright red ears betray him right away. "Both?"

Dean passes Jack off and yanks his big baby brother into a crushing hug. They're laughing and then sniffling and then laughing through tears of joy. 

Sam leaves the bunker to move into Eileen's quaint little home. There's no white picket fence but they do get a dog. 

* * *

Sometime after Jack turns four the bunker grows too quiet. It's not a place meant for two grown men, a little boy, and a singing teddy bear. They don't hunt but they still answer the phones. The calls grow more and more infrequent. 

"Jack should start school soon." 

Their bed is a little cramped what with the little boy sprawled out between them. That doesn't stop Castiel from running his fingers through Dean's hair. "Should he?"

Dean seems to know everything there is to know about raising a child. The knowledge comes at a price, yes, but he smiles proudly and fondly at every "Hi, Daddy!" and every kiss and hug and snuggle. 

("I won't let him grow up like I did.")

"There's a good school not too far away." His green eyes are closed and his breathing is slow and calm.   
"Near Sam and Eileen's?" He smiles even though Dean can't see it. Like his brother his ears go red when he's embarrassed. "Do you want to leave the bunker?"

Dean cracks his eyes open and his expression is open and hopeful.   
  


They find a two-bedroom house with a big kitchen and a yard with a swing set in the back. They ward it inside and out. They pack their things and leave the bunker. The lights go off and the door locks behind them with a quiet click. 

Marvelous Marvin plays "Carry on Wayward Son." He can't remember if that's on the mixtape or not. 

* * *

Sam and Eileen name their won Wilson Dean Winchester after her father and his brother. Dean cracks a joke about the squished faced baby's given name to hide the crack in his voice. 

Marvelous Marvin is miraculously silent. Jack peeks over the edge of the chair to see the creature in his daddy's arms. "Daddy?"   
"Gently, Jackie," Dean advises and he sniffles as Jack brushes his lips against little Wilson's cheek. 

And it's so, so easy. 

* * *

Raising Jack keeps them younger than their bodies would suggest. Castiel knows his body is closer to sixty than fifty and Dean is closer to fifty than forty. Dean’s lower back acts up when the weather shifts and Castiel feels something in his shoulder crackle and pop occasionally.

He dreads the day he sets Jack down and never picks him up again. For now their eight year old can still be thrown over their shoulders.

“It’s a sleepover. It’s good for him.”

Dean is a good father but years and years and years and years of paranoia can’t be undone by a few years of suburban domesticity.

“What if something happens? Monsters didn’t just disappear, Cas.”  
“Monsters are too afraid of the name Winchester to come within five miles of the city limits.”

Dean practically throws himself onto their bed and then yanks Castiel down by the front of his shirt. He rests his hands on either side of Dean's head to hold himself up. 

"If he leaves for the night we can finally do it."   
"Yeah? ...I guess it's alright then."

They pop the speakers out of Marvelous Marvin's chest cavity while Jack grows cavities in his teeth from too much birthday cake. 

Marvelous Marvin has two sets of speakers, as it turns out. Its fur is thinning and one of its ears is holding on by a thread. The velcro holding it's back panel open is pinned closed with a safety pin. It plays a distorted tape of R&B hits that Dean concedes is better than nothing. 

(Willie had made it for Jack for Christmas and their boy had lit up brighter than their Christmas tree.)

When he wants to go to junior prom Dean teaches Jack to dance to the tune of "Lonely Teardrops" and "To Be Loved." Marvelous Marvin and Castiel are both pulled into the lesson. Marvelous Marvin crackles when Castiel laughs. 

* * *

Dean gifts Baby to Jack on the day their boy leaves for college. He hands the keys over with a crushing hug and a kiss pressed into Jack's soft hair. 

("If there is even a speck of rust...")

("Don't worry, Dad.")

When they're alone and everything is too quiet Dean cries. Castiel strokes his hair and smiles his way through his own blues. Being human is all it's cracked up to be. His body ages and his mind slows every day, but the being is worth it. 

Somewhere from inside the house, Marvelous Marvin plays "The Sweetest Feeling." That isn't on the tape. 


	5. now I smell the rain

"Hello, Cas." 

He squints at the sudden, bright light that appears beside him. Slowly he focuses on Jack's smile and hand raised in greeting. It's hard to look at him sometimes. His soul shines so much brighter and, more painfully, he is a reminder of so many things he wants to forget. 

  
"What are you doing?" Jack sits next to him. His feet swing childishly against the cliffside. Heaven is vast and green and not quite ready yet. In the distance, a great white wall stands. They have so much work to do. "You're sad."

He cocks his head and squints his eyes. Dean always said that he and Cas really were father and son. "Here. This will make you feel better. I know it makes me feel better when I'm sad."

Castiel feels his mouth twitch. Marvelous Marvin stares at him and he can see his reflection in the toy's glass eyes. Dean had been the one to give it to Jack in the first place. 

("Sammy always wanted one of those Teddy Ruxpin things but we couldn't afford it. What kid doesn't want a teddy bear? What? Don't laugh, asshole!")

"Thank you, Jack." He activates the toy and the first few notes of Jackie Wilson's "To Be Loved" start to play. He turns it off before the first verse can finish. 

("Angels don't dance? Nah. Come on. I taught Sammy. I'll teach you. Let me find the right song.")

"Do you not like it?" 

Castiel knows, somewhere in his mind, that lying to God isn't really possible, but he only sees his puppy dog eyed son. "I like it, Jack. Thank you." He leans in and bumps their foreheads together. "I was just thinking about what my Heaven would be if I could have one."  
"Was I there?"  
"You and Dean and Sam."

Jack stands and dusts off his jeans. He puts his hands on his hips and surveys their work. "Well, they'll be here sooner than we think. We have to get everything ready." 

Castiel sets Marvelous Marvin down and then stands next to Jack. The toy starts to sing "Ramble On." It's the third song on the mixtape Dean had given him. Jack smiles at him. "You like this one, right?"  
He fakes a smile and ruffles Jack's hair. "Yes, Jack. I like this one. Let's get back to work." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've literally never written for Supernatural before so comments are appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've ever read anything I've written you will know that I like short chapters, non-linear narratives, and alliteration. Not beta read so if you catch an error please _politely_ point it out.


End file.
